Determining What is Important in Terms of the Quality of an Urban Green Network: A Study of Urban Planning in England and Scotland

Setting the Standard for Green Infrastructure: The Need for, and Features of, a Benchmark in England

“…green spaces) instead of the network, as well as the ability to score quite highly in a number of the systems, and therefore be certified as a sustainable development, without really considering green infrastructure were major limitations of existing assessment systems. Green infrastructure therefore was not considered to be robustly assessed in existing benchmarks, certainly not in a way that would meet the key characteristics of green infrastructure (Roe & Mell, 2013;O'Neil & Gallagher, 2014). Thus, this study has identified a gap in the market for a benchmark that assesses green infrastructure defined as a strategically planned, multifunctional network of green and blue features.…”

“…Informed by the review of benchmarks, the benchmark should include standards related to water management, nature conservation, health and well-being, and high design and environmental quality incorporating a mix of mandatory and optional standards. These overlap with many of the key functions for green infrastructure (Kambites & Owen, 2006;O'Neil & Gallagher, 2014).…”

“…These standards should also assess procedural elements that have been shown to facilitate the long-term delivery of green infrastructure (e.g. effective consultation, long-term governance and funding; Kambites & Owen, 2006;Roe & Mell, 2013;O'Neil & Gallagher, 2014). There was also agreement that the benchmark should consider green infrastructure at the landscape scale; seen as a major limitation in other assessment systems.…”

“…The reasons for this are varied. They include planning processes that allow policy to take precedence over local priorities (Roe & Mell, 2013;Wilker et al, 2016) and a lack of agreement or certainty among the various actors as to the quality of green infrastructure or how to plan it effectively (Roe & Mell, 2013;Albert & Von Haaren, 2014;O'Neil & Gallagher, 2014;Khoshkar et al, 2018). Where the need for green infrastructure is established and agreement reached on its design and extent there can be considerable uncertainty (or disagreement) over the most appropriate mechanisms for funding delivery, and longterm management and maintenance (Khoshkar et al, 2018).…”

Public Spaces of Kaunas from the Inter-War Period to Contemporary: Content Analysis

“…There can be historical, spatial, historical-spatial, social-spatial, theoretical, practical, qualitative, and quantitative approaches in this field and it is evident, that the majority of these studies involve the social dimension and the analysis of different contents of communication, thus content analysis method can be a handy tool in this broad field. Currently content analysis is applied for the analysis of planning documents [4], maps, interviews and surveys data [6], [7], photographs [8], etc., and integrated with other methods, including spatial analysis [9] in the context of urban research.…”